December 21, 2015 – weekly land trust news

COLT’s weekly land trust news

December 21st, 2015

Happy Monday everyone,

Or, happy Monday to those of us still working this week. Seems kinda quiet all around.

We hope everyone saw the good news on Friday: Congress passed, and the President signed into law, permanency for the enhanced tax incentive for conservation easement donations. This represents a huge victory for land trusts and landowners.

Along with the easement incentive, Congress also renewed the Land and Water Conservation Fund for another three years, along with boosting FY 2016 funding nearly 50% to $450 million. While the conservation community will still be pushing for permanency come 2018 when LWCF expires again, there is general agreement that the boost in funding along with temporary renewal of the fund is a big win as well.

In case you are wondering, “What is so ‘enhanced‘ about this tax incentive anyway?”, here’s the skinny:

It raises the maximum deduction a donor can take for donating a conservation easement from 30% of their adjusted gross income (AGI) in any year to 50%;

It allows qualified farmers and ranchers to deduct up to 100% of their AGI; and

It increases the number of years over which a donor can take deductions from 6 to 16 years.

These generous elements are now the permanent norm available to landowners who donate a conservation easement. So this is great news for conservation.

So, with these nice gifts for conservation at this time of year, we’d like to wish you all a happy holiday season. On behalf of Kelley and myself, we have been grateful to work with each of you this year, and look forward to another banner year in 2016.

“The purpose of the meeting is for the Focused Investment Subcommittee to make funding recommendations to the OWEB Board with respect to applications for Focused Investment Partnership Implementation and Focused Investment Partnership Capacity Building grants.”